Sunday, November 15, 2009

This land was made for VIPs and all things must be tailored to ensure their safety, well being and prosperity. The people? They are expendable. Faceless and nameless. Just statistics forgotten within hours. Masood Hasan

The MQM has managed to, and will continue to, stay in the political mainstream because its vote bank is fixed and customary – a vote bank that happens to be set in the largest city of the country and consequently has the most number of seats. Give or take a couple of seats, there will be no challenge to the MQM in Pakistan's largest city in the near future. Gibran Peshimam

Pakistan's heptagonal (a polygon with seven sides) game matrix has President Z, the Pakistan Army, the PPP, the PML-N, America, the media and the judiciary as major players. Game theory assumes that each of the seven players shall always act to maximise their individual gains by trying to anticipate the response to their own actions by one or other players in the game. Farrukh Saleem [what would Gibran's reactin be to this heptagonal matrix? Octagonal? ~~t]

When Ghinwa Bhutto received news that her husband, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, had been shot, she immediately rang the then-prime minister (and her sister-in-law), Benazir Bhutto; the latter, however, did not answer her phone. Ghinwa Bhutto then called Benazir Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who picked up the phone but disconnected the line without hearing details of the incident, said Rao Imran Ashfaq, a reporter of an evening newspaper, while testifying as a defence witness in the murder case of Mir Murtaza Bhutto and his six comrades. Mir Murtaza Bhutto murder case [Fatima Bhutto has written similar accounts ~ t]

Till last week, Nawaz Sharif wanted the 17th Amendment’s immediate abolition but since his latest interaction with Prime Minister Gilani he stands a milder man, agreeing to rather protracted phase-wise amendments but still treating the removal of the three-time bar clause on his becoming prime minister as his numero-uno priority. This he wants done before all other amendments, sources insist.In the fast changing political scenario, Nawaz Sharif was also told to have become agreeable to the gradual withdrawal of powers from President Zardari instead of the past demand of stripping him of all the powers like appointments of judges, service chiefs etc in one-go. Power grab at any cost